


Flowers for the Wolf's Father

by The_Man_With_The_Tattered_Smile



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Norse Religion & Lore, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 22:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17170202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Man_With_The_Tattered_Smile/pseuds/The_Man_With_The_Tattered_Smile
Summary: Loki suffers from hanahaki disease





	Flowers for the Wolf's Father

Loki slowly awoke, becoming aware of a pleasant taste in his mouth.  
  
This in itself was unusual enough that it shocked him into full wakefulness.  
  
The Flame-Haired god wasn't sure he'd ever woken up with a pleasant taste in his mouth. The dregs of the night before's mead, many times. The strong taste of blood, quite possibly even more times. A mouthful of ashes, more often than he cared to think about. Ice, poison, whatever that horrific muck they ate in Útgarðar was, all of these he could remember, and none of them had he ever thought of as pleasant.  
  
This taste was pleasant, though. A gentle and natural taste. It reminded him a little of that one time he'd drunk ambrosia while visiting Olympus, but not as strong or as sweet. It reminded him of...  
  
...well, he wasn't quite sure what, but he was increasingly convinced that he had tasted it before. That thought was a happy one, if tinged with the frustration of not being able to remember quite why. But it was a pure happiness, Loki thought, the kind of thing he would usually mock Iðunn or Sif for talking about, and it was one of the few times that the Liesmith could think of he had felt such an emotion.  
  
Not that the God With The Tattered Smile was a stranger to happiness - far from it. But the happiness he knew was a sharp, savage thing, the fierce, fiery joy of besting a foe, whether by insult or at arms. His scarred lips were no strangers to smiling, but the smile Sly Loki felt upon his face now was a gentler, kinder thing than he was accustomed to.  
  
Floral, he thought. The taste was floral.  
  
No sooner had he thought this than he was gripped by a coughing fit, and no ordinary coughing fit at that. He sounded, even to his own ears, like a cat struggling to rid itself of a furball. Finally, he managed to clear his throat of the obstruction, and spat a handful of bloody petals from his mouth. His throat felt like it had been cut by the thorns of a rose, and deep inside of him, he felt a pain as if the petals were somehow a part of him.  
  
He reached up and plucked the last of them from his mouth, holding it before his face to examine it. It was definitely a petal, and it felt as soft as goose down in his hand. Hard to believe it was so hard and sharp as his throat attested, but even as he watched, a drop of blood dripped from the bottom of the petal. For some reason, gaxing upon it, he felt a great sadness settle upon him, a sense of a lost time when he had been truly happy and could now never return to.  
  
He ground the petals beneath his feet and stalked off. He was the father of strife, and it was time that someone - whoever had the misfortune to cross his path first - was reminded of that.

* * *

The coughing fits became more and more frequent, the mouthfuls of petals larger and larger, and Loki's patience, never long, was soon exhausted. His temper grew worse and worse, and by the end of the day, there was no one in Asgard who was prepared to talk to him. Which was unfortunate for the Giant's Son, because only by expelling his very worst vitriol upon some undeserving soul could he find any relief from his floral torture.  
  
His wanderings brought him to Urðarbrunnr, the Well of Fate, where Yggdrasil's mighty roots reached into Asgard. Loki considered consulting the Norns, but decided against it. For one, Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld were not women he considered friends, and for another, he hated the thought of being bound by fate - or anything else - with a burning passion that ran deeper than even Wisest Odin or All-Seeing Heimdallr could plumb.  
  
He sat down, with his back against the World Ash, and thought upon his situation. He barely moved for hours, and the afternoon passed him by as he sat there. Anyone who had seen him might well have thought him dead, so still was he - even cheeky Ratatoskr left him alone, sensing that the Wolf's Father would be poor sport this day.  
  
Loki was barely aware of this. He was convinced that someone had laid a curse upon him. He could think of no other explanation. Someone had succeeded in binding him, somehow, with charms and runes, and the thought made him furious. He lusted for vengeance upon whomever it was, but he lusted more still for freedom. Narrowing it down to whomever might feel that they had a score to settle with the Trickster, however, was not a quick process. He could at least rule out Thor, since the Thunderer tended towards more direct vengeances, but that wasn't that much help.  
  
But a curse. Anyone could pronounce a curse, but one strong enough to affect a god and intricate enough to ensnare the Most-Cunning of gods, that was a feat. There were few in all the Nine Worlds who could craft such a curse, and alas for Loki, he given nearly all of them reason to.  
  
Which made him so sad that he felt tears in his eyes, actual tears of sorrow. He wasn't sure he'd ever felt that before.  
  
Loki had many secrets, but the one he kept closest to his heart was this: he was a proud father. Not of Fenrir, Jörmungandr or Hela - they were monsters, and as much as he might glory in their malignant power, he also feared it. And not of Narfi or Vali - they were as insipid as their mother. But of his eldest child. Odin's steed, eight-legged Sleipnir, best of all the horses of Asgard.  
  
In his most secret heart, Loki thought that bringing Sleipnir was the single best thing he had ever done, and that the worth of that deed well out-weighed the occasional jibes he had to endure concerning the more personal details of Sleipnir's parentage. For Loki had borne that foal as a mare, sired upon themself by Svaðilfari, that mighty stallion, and greatest of all horses ever to live in all the Nine Worlds.  
  
Sleipnir, for his part, seemed more or less indifferent to Loki, but that suited Loki fine. He wanted nothing more than to simply gaze upon his son, as the horse gambolled in his fields. Loki knew - and for that matter, Sleipnir and his keepers knew too - that the eight-legged horse could easily leap the fences that surrounded him, had he a mind to. But Sleipnir had not inherited Loki's near-compulsive need for freedom. He was content with his lot and loyal to his rider.  
  
Musing upon the circumstances of Sleipnir's conception, Loki was struck by a realisation. Something he could not belief that he had overlooked, even knowing as he did how easily even the most accomplished deceivers can deceive themselves. Loki belatedly recalled that he was a shape changer.  
  
Retreating to the privacy of his halls, Loki set about transforming his very being. He pushed his insides, his throat and guts and all the organs of the chest, up and out through his mouth, so that he might examine each more closely, and determine the source of his flowering curse.  
  
It did not take him long to realise that it was his heart from which they emanated. There were literally flowers growing out of his, pushing their blooms into his lungs and there releasing the petals that filled his mouth and throat. Loki rearranged his body once more, returning to his insides to his inside, and set about changing the shape of his heart in an effort to frustrate the curse. But try as he might, the flowers stubbornly remained - and grew.

* * *

That night, Loki was afraid to sleep. He worried that the growth of the flowers within his body would suffocate him in his sleep. And so it was that Loki deceided to do the one thing he hated most to do in all the Nine Worlds: he would ask someone for help.  
  
Not just anyone, though. Loki was minded to seek the assistance of the giantess Angrboða. They had been lovers once, and their three children - the mighty wolf Fenrir, the World-Serpent Jörmungandr and the half-alive, half-dead Hela - had brough misery and the fear of worse yet to come to all the worlds. It was for this reason that this witch was known as the Bringer of Sorrows. And although they had not parted on the best of the terms, Loki knew she loved him still. Hopefully, that would be enough to ensure her assistance in this matter, and perhaps her discretion also.  
  
But Angrboða was unmoved by his pleas. She mocked him, in fact. Loki was a theif of hearts and hopes, of dignities and desires, she told him. He had stolen from her, and from his wife Sigyn, and from all the other women he had seduced or traduced or both. Yes, she still loved him, she admitted grudgingly. Which was why she had cursed him in this fashion.  
  
Loki was stunned, but he recovered quickly. He had underestimated Angrboða, and paid a price for it, he told her. He had learned his lesson, he said with all the humility he could muster, and he thanked her for it, and asked to be released from the curse now, coughing up flowers - whole buds now, not just petals - as he did so.  
  
Angrboða laughed in his face. You have learned nothing, she told him, for if you had, the curse would indeed release you. Then she kicked him in the bǫllr and pushed him out into the night.

* * *

Loki wandered long and lonesome that night, seeking answers he could not find, and leaving a trail of newborn flowers behind him - for the flowers now grew so fast and strong that they took root when they dropped to the ground. He tried not to mutter to himself - it was an annoying habit he disliked in Odin, and also, Heimdallr would hear him. Loki hated the Bifrost-guarding eavesdropper of the gods more than any other god for precisely this reason.  
  
Angrboða had given him no answers, but even in what little she had said, there were hints. He had to learn his lesson, that was clear, and presented no problem to him, for the Most-Cunning was ever quick to learn. Less clear, however, was the nature of that lesson. Loki had the depressing feeling that it was one of those lessons that make one a better person. In his experience, they were the hardest lessons to learn, the most painful in the learning, and likely to make one a more moral and decent person. Loki detested such lessons for all three of these reasons, but the most for the last.  
  
Dawn found him back near Sleipnir's stable, hoping that the sight of his proud son would once again inspire him. But the eight-legged horse was slow to rise that day, and Loki grew tired of waiting. His steps carried him away, and he walked for many days going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it, seeking answers that always eluded him.  
  
He thought long and hard about those he had mistreated in love, but he could not convince himself that he had been so very terrible to them. They were adults, every last one, and needed to take responsibility for their own choices. If he didn't love them as they loved him, well, that was only because his heart belonged to another first.  
  
Loki froze mid-step. Where had that thought come from? His heart didn't belong to anyone but himself, and never had. But then Loki considered that he was not only a he, and wondered to whom his heart belonged when it was her heart...

* * *

It took no little time to find him, for Svaðilfari had hidden himself away from gods and giants and men alike, and wanted nothing more to do with any of them. He lived alone, in a forest meadow deep in the wilds of Álfheimr, far beyond the gaze of Freyr, and desired - or so he thought - little more than to be left in peace.  
  
But when that pretty mare on whom he had sired the eight-legged steed of Odin returned to him, and pledged to him her undying love, he turned from his solitude, and they lived together many years, their hearts joined in love, near where the great flower that bloomed on the site the mare had promised to him grew ever more beautiful with the passage of the years.


End file.
